


625 Words to Know: A Series of Short Stories

by itsadastraperaspera, loveisanopenpage (itsadastraperaspera)



Category: Original Work
Genre: #prompts #oc #shortstory #dogs #ambiguousending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22095259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsadastraperaspera/pseuds/itsadastraperaspera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsadastraperaspera/pseuds/loveisanopenpage
Summary: A series of short stories based on the list of 625 words to know in your target language. Each prompt will focus on one of the words from the list, and will be roughly 1,000 words, give or take a few hundred words.





	1. Day I: Dog

A soft _thump_. A bit of whining at the door. Clara looks up from her phone, a light frown playing on her features. Rain patters on the roof—calming, yet foreboding. Should she call the cops? She lives alone, after all, and hardly thinks her aloe plant needs to be let back in.

_Thump. Thump-thump._ Another whine.

Well, this simply cannot stay this way. Clara’s heart beats a bit faster, but she grits her teeth and does the very thing she knows she should not do: she stands, poised to dial 9-1-1 should the need arise, and makes the short journey to her front door.

With a gentle, near-silent twist of the door handle, she slowly pulls the door open to reveal—

A small, black puppy, his fur matted and muddy, staring at her. He scurries in against her will, squeezing his way past her and leaving mud on the cuffs of her jeans. Clara sighs, understanding at this moment that her stubborn-minded, compassionate heart will leave her with no choice but to care for the poor thing. One day, she thinks. One day, and then I’ll send him to a shelter to be adopted by someone else. She knows she could not possibly care for him; one woman living in her tiny, messy home is a poor match for an energetic puppy.

She follows after the brown-black blur, wondering how something so small can create such a mess. Already there is a trail of little brown footprints on her faded hardwood floor, and she winces every time she hears the puppy skid into a piece of furniture, bumping it and inevitably knocking something to the floor. Finally catching up to him, she waits for the puppy to pause and snatches him up, wrestling him into her arms and holding him until he calms down. From this close, Clara can see that he’s at least part black lab, though her lack of dog breed knowledge prohibits her from identifying other parts of his heritage. He’s rather cute, when he’s not running rampant through her home—not that that means she’s developing an attachment, of course.

Clara clutches him to her chest as she walks into her kitchen, dropping him gently into her sink. She pauses for a moment, considering how to go about bathing a rather squirmy puppy. She guides her faucet away from the half of her two-part sink containing said puppy, and turns it on, running the water over her hand until it’s warm. She pulls out the hose and sets to work, steering the stream of water to the puppy’s lower back. He squirms—predictably—and attempts to jump out of the basin, to no avail. After the initial shock, he seems to enjoy his bath.

Once he’s free of mud and grime, she scoops him up in a fluffy green towel and towel-dries him, finally setting him down near her hearth to dry fully and warm up. She pulls a small baggie of leftover chicken from the night before out of her fridge and allows the puppy to have as much as he desires before putting what remains away. She picks up her phone again, snapping a quick photo and posting it to her Instagram story with a short caption (“Look at this little cutie! Found him at my doorstep, sending him to a shelter tomorrow :(“) before returning to her spot on the nearby couch. A few hours pass this way, with the little ball of black fluff dozing contentedly by the fire as Clara scrolls through her social media feeds, growing drowsy. However, just as she feels herself begin to drop off, she feels a light nudge at her knee, then a weight on her lap as the puppy climbs onto her and curls up again, still toasty from the heat of the fire. The puppy lets out a tiny, high-pitched snore as he quickly dozes off again. She smiles down at him, knowing that someday, a family will be very happy to have him in their lives.

The thought opens up an unexpected pit of dread in her stomach, quickly overtaken by confusion. Why should she be sad about this? He’s not her puppy—she couldn’t possibly care for him, what with her life being as it is right now. She’s hardly motivated to move most days, let alone take a puppy for a walk, or remember to feed him—hell, it’s essentially her plants keeping her from staying in bed all day—oh. What if a puppy could help her to do those things? It’s only logical; taking care of another life form would hold her accountable for the things she should do, but doesn’t. Exercise, eating, and socializing are things Clara often lacks the energy to do on her own, but with a companion, she could be motivated to do them through needing to care for another life form—like her plants, but with cuddling. Oh, damn it… now she has an emotional attachment. And a dog.


	2. Day II, Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She stepped onto the train at the stop exactly four stops away from Elliot McCoy’s. This would have been irrelevant – the correlation so weak it should have been disregarded. However, this would, in the grand scheme of things, become very relevant information. Her face, (bloodied, swelling, and rapidly turning vibrant shades of yellow, blue, and purple) was set into a firm, well-rehearsed look of nonchalance as she located the last remaining seat next to him. Two strangers, on a train. Two entirely separate lives, brought together by a series of circumstances and decisions that, if counted, would be innumerable. The odds? Infinitesimal. And yet, there they were."

She stepped onto the train at the stop exactly four stops away from Elliot McCoy’s. This would have been irrelevant – the correlation so weak it should have been disregarded. However, this would, in the grand scheme of things, become very relevant information. Her face, (bloodied, swelling, and rapidly turning vibrant shades of yellow, blue, and purple) was set into a firm, well-rehearsed look of nonchalance as she located the last remaining seat next to him. Two strangers, on a train. Two entirely separate lives, brought together by a series of circumstances and decisions that, if counted, would be innumerable. The odds? Infinitesimal. And yet, there they were.

He tried, for the first few minutes, to act as if the woman sitting next to him was entirely normal and not at all looking as though she had tried unsuccessfully to battle a brick wall.

Three stops away.

After multiple attempts to stare out of the window instead of sneaking glances at her still-swelling nose, he finally decided instead to work with – as opposed to suppressing – his curiosity. He swiveled around to ask—

“Let me guess, you’d like to know what I’ve done to my face?” She crossed her arms, attempting to scrunch her nose up. Pain flashed across her face, quickly masked again with nonchalance.

Elliot nearly fell out of his seat.

“I—uh, I’m so—well, to start—um, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t, I wasn’t trying to stare at your face—“ _Play it cool, McCoy,_ he reminded himself “—uh, I didn’t even see you had a face—“ _Not that cool, idiot! “—_ and even if I _did_ see that you had a face, I definitely didn’t see the massive bruises and probably broken nose – which you should take to the doctor, you shouldn’t leave that unattended – OR that you had a really pretty face which is really unfair really because you’re most likely insane and I wouldn’t want to date a psychopath—I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you because when the police reports come out I don’t want to go to court—“

“Would you like a shovel?” She attempted to pull the corners of her mouth into a half-smirk, again quickly retreating into a grimace as it presumably pulled on her tender face.

“—and the fees for a lawyer would be a lot for me because I’m still drowning in student debt and—wait, what?”

“I said, would you like a shovel? You know, so you can dig yourself further into the hole you’re in.” Another cut-off smirk, followed again by a wince of pain.

“Oh, um, yes – I mean, no – I mean, I don’t need a shovel, I’m not in a hole, and even if I was, I wouldn’t want to make it deeper, I would want to – oh, you meant the rambling—oh. Oh! Oh. I’ll… I’ll shut up now.”

A moment of silence fell between the two, lessened by the ambient chatter of the passengers around them.

An intake of breath. “Well, as you did bring it up, what _did_ you do to your face?”

“I’ll make sure it happens to yours too if you don’t shut up.”

A squeak of fear, followed by a quiet “Oh. Okay.”

Two stops away.

Thirty seconds of blissfully awkward silence. Elliot snuck a glance at her again, fighting the urge to ask for a third time. She made eye contact for just a moment before turning away quickly, pausing.

One stop away. One deeply annoyed huff.

“Fine. Dammit. I got mixed up with the guard rail outside the train station and I ended up on the floor. I was born into this world clumsy as hell and all I got out of it was some cute guy staring at me on the train home after a _very_ embarrassing moment in my life!”

He gaped at her, processing _some cute guy_. Then, in a moment of poor life choices, he did the unthinkable:

He busted out laughing.

The moment he did it, Elliot thought he was a dead man walking; to his surprise, however, she dropped all pretenses of annoyance and _joined_ him! They sat on the train for a few moments of hysterical laughter, only to pause, make eye contact, and start it up again.

“God, I haven’t laughed like that in _months,_ ” she said with a deep, contented sigh.

“Me either, honestly.”

Elliot’s stop rolled into view. He sobered up quickly, glancing at the rapidly-approaching Glenview Station, wishing that it was still a stop away.

“Oh, um…. This is my stop.” The train slowed. “I—this was fun. You know, once we got past the part where I thought you would murder me.”

“I suppose it was.” Her voice dripped with disappointment, as if she, too, did not want this moment to end.

The train came to a complete stop, the overhead PA system announcing their arrival with a static-y, lilting voice.

He stood, and she stood as well, making space for him to exit the aisle. He moved past her, continuing toward the door, before stopping and turning back to her.

“You know, I don’t know your name. Actually, I don’t believe we introduced ourselves at all… I’m Elliot. Elliot McCoy.”

“Valerie Brown.”

A split-second decision, a last-ditch effort--“Valerie, do you ride this train often?”

“No, actually – I’m visiting from out of town.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, it was lovely meeting you, and I was wondering if I could get your—“ At that moment, he was jostled out of the train car by other passengers, left standing just outside the car as the doors closed.

The train started to move with Valerie inside. She moved to the window where she could see him, and pressed her face to the glass, tears rolling down her face, as he stood, dumbfounded, and watched her roll away.


End file.
